At one side of the clearing, two soldiers took off their caps.
Ruan looked at their hands. Before gratitude, he saw exhaustion; before exhaustion, he saw the fact that they had survived.
The sweat stains inside their caps had not yet dried. They hesitated for a long while, not knowing where to put the hands that held them.
Both were men who had survived not long ago after passing through Ruan’s hands.
One stood with his arm slung around his neck, and the other was holding the bandage wrapped around his waist with one hand.
They did not come in right away.
They lingered in front of the tent for a long while, then finally stopped in the same spot.
The morning after a battle was never quiet.
Groans remained, the work of recovery remained, and the ragged breathing of those not yet dead remained.
In the clearing before the medical tent, bloodstained stretchers stood propped at an angle.
The rain had stopped, but the wet earth still clung to their ankles.
Ruan was standing beside a tent pole, washing his hands.
The water in the basin quickly clouded.
The trembling in his fingers had not subsided all night.
On the backs of his hands, dried blood and fresh blood remained in layers.
Karen stood beside the entrance.
Mud that had not yet dried clung to the tip of her scabbard.
Her face was that of someone silently counting the people passing in front of the tent.
Ruan glanced that way and washed his hands again.
He had to check first whether wounds had reopened, or whether fevers had risen.
“If there’s a problem, come inside.”
At his dry words, the soldier with his arm in a sling stepped forward.
His Adam’s apple bobbed hard.
“I survived.”
Ruan shook his hands, scattering the water.
He already knew what words would follow.
That only made him more tired.
“I know.”
Though the answer was brief, the soldier’s face grew even more tense.
He suddenly bent at the waist.
It was a deep bow.
The soldier beside him bowed as well.
Karen’s brows moved ever so slightly.
Three men from the evacuation unit who were passing by slowed their steps.
The front of the medical tent was always a place that drew many eyes, but that day, people’s gazes gathered with unusual speed.
“Thanks to you, Medical Officer.”
The bowed soldier’s voice trembled.
“Three men from our squad came back.”
Ruan wiped his wet hands on his apron.
“If you came back, then rest. If your wound opens, you’ll be lying down again.”
He had meant to end it there.
But from the outer edge of the clearing, other soldiers began to gather.
Men who had been carried in on stretchers yesterday, men who had burned with fever the day before, faces Ruan had laid hands on through the night.
They were not faces someone had called together.
And yet they gathered at around the same time, wearing similar expressions.
One leaned on crutches, and another had bandages wrapped all the way up beneath his jaw.
Someone looked unable even to stand without bracing himself against a wall.
Their conditions were all different, but their gazes were strangely alike.
Someone took off his cap.
Someone bowed his head.
Someone, bent halfway at the waist, could not bring himself to straighten again.
They were faces that had come to offer thanks, but as their number grew, the air changed.
It was no longer an atmosphere that would end with two men’s greetings.
Two soldiers from the evacuation unit had set down their stretcher and were watching the scene.
There were no smiles on their faces either.
They merely stood straighter for no reason, holding their breath.
Only then did Ruan fully remove his hands from the basin.
“Stop.”
His voice was low, but it reached the clearing clearly.
The two soldiers standing in the front flinched.
But they did not step back.
Instead, one soldier behind them dragged his injured knee and came farther forward.
“Medical Officer.”
A dark bruise had spread across half the soldier’s face.
Ruan remembered that face.
He was the man whose side had been grazed by a spearpoint at dawn on the third day of battle.
“I truly thought that was the end for me there.”
Ruan did not answer.
The longer those words went on, the longer the breaths around them would grow as well.
He wanted to stop that.
“So.”
The soldier’s throat caught once, and his cap lowered first before his chest.
The soldier right beside him silently took off his cap as well.
A soldier in the back belatedly lifted his hand.
It was not a motion anyone had ordered.
Karen immediately stepped forward.
Her hand touched the hilt of her sword, then stopped.
It was the moment of deciding whether she should block them, or cut this off before it grew louder.
But it was already too late.
The motion of the cap’s brim lowering close to the wet earth was small.
At that small movement, the air behind them wavered all at once.
A third man tried to remain standing until the end, then bowed his head, and a young soldier in the back clutched his cap to his chest.
Every gaze in the clearing turned toward Ruan at once.
The back of Ruan’s neck stiffened coldly.
He knew by instinct that stopping this scene was harder than raising people back to their feet.
“Get up.”
He said.
“Your wounds will open again.”
The soldier in the front bowed his head even lower.
It was not the face of a man trying to disobey him.
Rather, it was the opposite.
It was the face of someone hearing even those words as words handed down again by the one who had saved him.
Ruan’s breath caught, not from irritation, but from exhaustion.
His words kept turning into something else.
He was telling them to get up, and yet even those words made them bow lower.
He walked forward himself.
He tried to grab the kneeling soldier’s arm and pull him to his feet.
The soldier started and tried to rise, but someone behind him bowed first, tangling the movement.
The clearing grew quieter and quieter.
That quiet was heavier.
“Don’t.”
Ruan said lowly.
“I didn’t save people to receive this.”
He deliberately did not meet their eyes one by one.
If he did, someone would take even that as permission.
Then one soldier in the back lifted his head with an almost startled face.
In that expression was not embarrassment, but acceptance.
They were faces that would bow their heads even deeper if denied, so no matter which way he spoke, the meaning would slide away from him.
Karen hardened her jaw as she watched the scene.
If it had been a danger she could cut down with a blade, it might have been easier instead.
But what filled the clearing now was not the point of an enemy’s sword.
It was the bowed heads and gazes of those who had survived.
Those were hard to push away, and once gathered, they spread even wider.
She was about to half-step in front of Ruan to shield him, then stopped.
If she blocked him with her body, this image would only become more fixed.
That made her feel even worse.
The sound of warhorse hooves came from the direction of headquarters.
Two of Aizen’s messengers stopped at the edge of the clearing.
Behind them, Aizen Locke slowly rode in on his horse.
Without even dismounting, he swept his gaze once over the clearing.
The soldiers who had taken off their caps.
Ruan standing before them.
Karen standing at his side.
There was no surprise in Aizen’s gaze.
Instead, there was calculation.
For a while, he said nothing.
That silence was colder instead.
Only after seeing that Aizen had arrived did a few soldiers half-straighten, but the clearing had already hardened around that single scene.
The two messengers held their reins and did not even meet each other’s eyes.
They wore the faces of men who knew this scene would grow larger the moment it was carried by mouth.
Feeling that gaze, Ruan grew even more tired.
This scene was not his, and yet only his name had been driven into the center of it.
“All of you, stand.”
Aizen said lowly.
His voice was not loud, but it reached the end of the clearing.
“Anyone whose wound has opened will lie down again. Do not block the front of the medical tent.”
Aizen did not tell them not to be grateful.
He did not tell them not to believe.
He only told them to clear the way.
Ruan did not miss that slight difference.
Aizen did not break this scene.
He merely scattered it.
Once the order fell, the soldiers belatedly moved.
There were those who could not put their caps back on, and those who backed away with their eyes on the ground.
Courtesy learned first by the body could not be erased at once with a single order.
One soldier, in the middle of getting up, bowed his head again.
Only after the man beside him pushed him up with an elbow did he finally retreat.
Aizen’s gaze rested on Ruan for a moment.
There was neither reproach nor praise in it.
It was the look of a man already calculating this scene at another value.
“Medical Officer.”
Ruan did not answer, and instead looked toward the soldier whose knees were smeared with dirt.
The end of his bandage was wet.
He immediately reached out and caught the soldier by the sleeve.
“Come inside. I need to look at it again.”
The soldier bowed his head deeply, as if he had received permission.
That reaction made Ruan recoil even more.
He had simply meant that the wound was wet and needed to be checked again.
Even so, the soldier entered with an almost trembling face.
Karen let out a short breath.
It was neither relief nor resignation.
At this point, Karen knew as well that this was not something that could be cut off with a blade.
She swept her gaze over the soldiers’ faces. She was counting who might kneel again, who might continue the remaining words with their eyes.
As Ruan lifted the tent flap, he looked back at the clearing one last time.
Several soldiers still stood there, unable to fully disperse.
Their caps were still off.
No one spoke loudly.
That made it all the clearer.
Someone gripped a wet cap in both hands, twisting it, unable to lift his head.
Someone only moved his lips.
Even without words, the clearing had already said everything.
What remained over the clearing was only the smell of wet earth and suppressed breath.
Water dripping from the brim of a cap held in hand slowly seeped into the soil.
No one could put it back on.
He clenched his wet hand once, then released it.
The trembling in his fingers was still there.
He had never thought a day would come when he would have to tell the people he had saved not to take off their caps before him.
What he hated even more was the premonition that today was not the end.
Just before he entered the tent, he heard the faint rasp of someone taking off a cap behind him again.
Ruan did not look back.